Book and Author Marketing

Publicity is the dentistry of the creative world, you pay everything upfront and sign a document agreeing that there are no guarantees and the other party isn’t responsible for the results or quality of their work while you are expected to cheerfully put forward years of work upfront for nothing.

Connections, networking, and reach come next. These are the forces that put a work in front of an audience. These elements can take years to collect and generate or can be bought for certain prices. It is easy to feel like buying influence is somewhat jumping the queue, because it is. But that doesn’t make it a forbidden approach, only unsavory.

Primary Steps

These are both the first steps to take and the underpinnings to which all other steps need to relate. The core of a marketing strategy is the book being sold. The book is the book. It is not some tool made to gain money (success is a hope, not a goal). The story, the information, the work itself needs to be considered, reconsidered, and pushed forward. Marketing should reflect the importance of the work, not force the work to be ‘sellable’.

Ideal Reader

The primary audience of a book is the writer. Or, it should be. At some point writing for an audience means writing something that appeals to people who care more about an idea than the writer does. More than a few writers have become victims of the success of a series and forced to create more content in a world with which they no longer connect.

Considering who is going to be reading the book is key to understanding how to market. Where are these people, what types of interaction do they value? Which types do they reject? Where do they congregate and what is the price of admission to those places?

The best thing about courting the ideal reader is that they are the most likely to spread the word about a work. They want more of the thing that they want. This makes even a niche book come gain legs. The ‘cult classic’ movie scene proves how valuable a dedicated, core base can be for not only broadcasting a work but garnering demand for more of its kind.

Secondary Reader

Appealing only to a core audience can be a noose around a work’s throat. Even if that audience is large, it has limitations and the longer a work stays in the public eye the more constraining the audience becomes. They develop ideas about what can and can’t be done and eventually a writer can’t develop or change.

Courting a secondary audience helps a book to find a wider audience and gives the writer room to develop other works.

Consider a secondary audience like a Venn diagram of people who share the interests and tastes of the ideal reader but only by a third. These audiences are less about what they want in a book and more what they don’t’ want. They often enjoy some tropes and modes of a genre but are put off by others.

Highlighting key aspects of a book indicates to these readers that they will get what they want while still allowing them a chance to watch out for elements they detest.

Inside Steps

Marketing is a two-fold effort. It requires internal development and external pushes. These two elements function as a megaphone, amplifying a solid concept so that it can still be understood after dilution.

Reviews

Consider what a good review looks like. Consider what a bad review looks like. Write those reviews yourself. These reviews aren’t meant to be printed, or even seen, they exist to gauge how you feel about the work.

Self-reviews also prep a writer to talk about a work be it in person or only in text. It is one thing to talk yourself about how you feel it is going, it is another to try and present that information without your own internal shorthand and often over-critical lenses.

Goals (sales, reach)

The process of selling a book is, ultimately, longer than it takes to write a book because the book will (hopefully) exist for longer than it took to create.

To retain motivation (for the next book and to talk about the current one), a writer needs to consider what success for a work looks like and to focus only on that.

Creating goals in terms of sales, reach, and responses sets a writer up for success rather than being left twisting in the wind.

Outside Steps

Not everything will be in the hands of the writer or their team. At some point, whim and cajoling take hold. To control (or at least influence) these forces, the best bet is to understand the effects and the outlets that shape them.

Reviewers

Getting people to review a book isn’t easy. Books, unlike other forms of media, take days, if not weeks, to digest and review. A movie can be dealt with in a day. A television or internet show in roughly the same. The only thing that takes comparable time are games, and only if a reviewer needs to finish it to make a more holistic statement.

Asking for someone to take that kind of time requires some quid pro quo in terms of the ask and the expectations of the timeline. Often, books are sent to reviewers months (3-6) before a release to ensure a review is out by release.

Outside of professional (or semi-pro) reviewers, a writer needs to get buzz going with their immediate circle. I tis difficult to sell to a distant, unseen audience if the people closest to a work can’t be bothered to at least leave a few words about their opinions.

Booksellers

Even though bookstores are fading, outlets in which books are presented are still an important component of the book market. Ranking on lists within a digital sales front is only one place that books appear (even if it is the largest).

Bookstores purchase based on the preferences of booksellers that attend conferences and industry events. They are a target for marketing efforts with their own interests and constraints. They put up cash to bring a book into a store without a guarantee of a sale. Digital stores are out basically nothing to host a work, they make money if it sells but don’t pay until after. This difference shapes how a bookseller needs to be approached and convinced of the strength of a work.

Tours

Book tours and in-store appearances have never been as exciting for the public as music tours but they do play an important part in humanizing writers and reminding the public that there are people behind creative works. Real people with real drives and real budgetary limitations.

Getting into a book tour circuit (on your own dime) often means reaching out to individual stores and working with managers and owners to create a day and time. Most of the promotion ends up being on the writer and the cost to get to and from a venue is also on them.

Early Steps

A marketing campaign starts long before the work is complete. It starts when a writer sets out to make themselves known. Many writers try this before actually having much to say or any experience reaching out. This leads to a certain disillusionment for both writers and readers. Mostly, this sets a bar that needs to be overcome but also provides a clearer sense of the in-group to the wannabe-group.

Establish a Presence

The first goal for a writer is to create enough of a presence that they can be found when sought out. This usually starts with a website and one or more social media accounts.

Monitoring and responding to potential and first-time readers builds trust and generates a sense of purpose. Readers are far more likely to be interested if they know the investment of time into an author will go somewhere. Like any relationship, they are looking for some guarantees that the writer will still be there in a week or a year and won’t disappear overnight.

Expertise/Interest

A writer also needs to be seen as something of a knowledgeable figure on the thing they are creating. This can’t be overstated for non-fiction, in which a reader wants only the best information (though they will often fall for pseudo information when it is presented with confidence). For fiction, the ability to use words cleverly and to express a n interest in a chosen genre are equally important. Readers want to know that they will be getting a book that meets their expectations and not pay money (and time) only to be led astray or outright mocked.

Generating expertise is about being available to answer questions and putting out micro-content and updates that demonstrate effort and reinforce experience. This can take the form of a production blog, micro-updates and messages, discussing research areas and questions, or mentioning interviews or influences being read.